Worker activists meet to build solidarity

Activists from the Independent Workers’ union of Great Britain (IWGB), United Voices of the World (UVW), UCU, Unite, RMT, Bectu, and other unions and workers’ organisations came together for the “How To Win At Work” conference on Saturday 18 August, hosted by the left-wing think tank New Economics Foundation.

The culmination of a project aimed at linking up the struggles of “precarious” workers such as cleaners, bar workers, restaurant workers, delivery couriers and others, the conference saw activists take part in workshops on the basics of workplace organising and planning workplace action.

The event gave workers an opportunity to understand and contextualise their own workplace experiences, with casualised education workers discovering commonalities of experience with cleaners and track maintenance workers on London Underground, Deliveroo couriers, and others.

A committee of volunteers was formed to help the unions involved coordinate ongoing solidarity and joint action. The project has also produced a series of videos on organising and fighting back at work.

The conference ended with a rendition of “Solidarity Forever”, after a closing speech from Workers’ Liberty supporter and RMT activist Daniel Randall, which explained the history of the song. Randall said: “‘We can bring to birth the new world from the ashes of the old’, runs the last line of the song’s final verse.

“Solidarity is our mechanism for doing that; our struggle aims to elevate solidarity from the organising principle of resistance to the governing principle of society.”